Immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border has long been a key issue in U.S. elections. Regardless of the U.S. administration, immigration is a politicized pawn. The upcoming biennial midterm parliamentary elections are about to be held and are about members of Congress and the Democrats and Republicans. Although this is not a presidential election, it will still have an important impact on the domestic and foreign policy of the United States.
The U.S.-Mexico border is the border between the United States and Mexico, from San Diego and Tijuana in the west to Brownsville and Matamoros in the east, established after the Mexican-American War of 1848. The U.S.-Mexico border is the busiest border in the world, with about 2.5 million people crossing the border legally each year, and the massive influx of illegal immigrants and serious drug crimes into the United States has become an important issue in U.S.-Mexico relations.
On June 10, 2021 local time, Yuma, Arizona, USA, migrant families from Brazil entered the United States through a gap in the border wall.
The problem of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border has a long history, and territorial disputes along the U.S.-Mexico border in the 19th century are its historical roots. The end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 ushered in an era of free immigration between the two countries, that is, the border was open, and immigration and commerce on the border were not restricted and regulated, a state that lasted until the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. During the Mexican Revolution, a large number of Mexican refugees poured into the United States. From 1900 to 1910, there were only 23,000 Mexican immigrants in the United States, but in 1910-1919 it surged to 173,000. In 1924, the U.S. Congress passed The Johnson-Reed Act, which established a quota system based on immigrant nationality, ending the era of free immigration between the United States and Mexico, and the issue of illegal immigration entered the historical stage. Since then, the United States has experienced four waves of illegal Mexican immigration.
September 8, 1847, Battle of Morino Del Rey in the Mexican-American War.
In response to the problem of illegal immigration in Mexico, the US government has repeatedly intervened. In 1929, against the backdrop of the Great Economic Crisis, the Hoover administration implemented the Mexican Repatriation Program, during which some 500,000 Mexicans and Mexicans were repatriated. After Roosevelt took office, he continued to raise the immigration threshold and prohibit immigrants who could become public charges from entering the United States, and the local government of the United States listed all Mexican immigrants who could not be employed as "likely to be public burdens" and deported them on this ground.
On New York Bay in 1951, immigrants sit on benches at the immigration checkpoint on Ellis Island. Ellis Island is home to the busiest immigration checkpoint in the United States.
In 1954, the Eisen Howell administration launched Operation Wetback, which again deported illegal immigrants, and 1.1 million illegal Mexican immigrants were deported. In 1986, the Reagan administration enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 to try to cut off the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States by strengthening border enforcement and sanctioning employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. In 1996, the Clinton administration enacted The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which continued to strengthen border enforcement, increasing criminal penalties for smuggling immigrants, allowing telephone tapping of illegal immigrants with forged documents, and stipulating that only citizens who can prove their identity can receive social insurance, social benefits, and free basic education.
Mexican farm workers, also known as Mexican day laborers, line up at a labor center where U.S. immigration officials handle work at the U.S.-Mexico border in 1957.
After 9/11, the US-Mexico border issue rose to the level of national security, and the George W. Bush administration enacted the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 and the Secure Fence Act of 2006, increasing the number of border patrol officers for fiscal years 2002 to 2006. An additional $150 million was allocated to USCIS for the purchase of technical equipment to improve border security, to require the issuance of biometric, machine-readable and anti-counterfeiting visas and passports, to prohibit visas for persons on the terrorist State list, and to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Two workers weld a galvanized steel fence built on the U.S.-Mexico border in 1979.
The Trump administration has restarted construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border that was suspended during the Obama era, and introduced a "Trump administration family separation policy" to forcibly separate illegal immigrants smuggled into the United States from their children.
On June 23, 2020, local time, St. Louis, Arizona, USA, US President Trump participated in the commemoration ceremony of the 200-mile border wall on the US-Mexico border.
It is not difficult to find that successive US administrations have either "blocked" or "chased" illegal immigrants in Mexico, which has not effectively controlled the influx of illegal immigrants, nor has it substantially reduced the number of illegal immigrants, and has not cured the symptoms but not the root cause. From 2012 to 2020, the average number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border was about 540,000 per year, and the number of arrests in 2021 was more than triple. At present, the large-scale migrant smuggling network has matured and developed into a profiteering industry controlled by international criminal syndicates, which is very difficult to rectify. Bribery, kidnapping, extortion, death penalty, corporal punishment, sexual assault, torture, and disappearances are commonplace for illegal immigrants in Mexico, and the number of unaccompanied illegal immigrant children along the U.S.-Mexico border continues to be high and resettled, causing a serious humanitarian crisis.
March 24, 2021 local time, Washington, D.C., United States, US President Biden, Vice President Harris, Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas and immigration advisers attended the meeting at the White House. US President Joe Biden announced at the White House on the same day that he authorized Vice President Harris to lead the handling of illegal immigration at the border between the United States and Mexico.
Although a month after Biden took office, he introduced what is billed as the largest immigration reform bill in the United States in nearly 30 years, the US Citizenship of 2021, which provides a large-scale immigration status legalization system, it has not yet passed. The issue of immigration is intertwined with national security and terrorism, and has become the most unstable link in the Biden administration's 100 days in office.
July 26, 2018 local time, Tijuana, Mexico, aerial photo of the landscape near the US-Mexico border wall.
March 30, 2019 local time, Tijuana, Mexico, US-Mexico border. US President Donald Trump threatened on the 29th that if Mexico cannot stop illegal immigrants from traveling to the United States, he may close the southern border next week.
On December 17, 2020 local time, at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, the United States will deploy robot dogs to participate in patrols along the US-Mexico border.
On November 2, 2021, local time, Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, local people commemorate the tragically dead migrants who tried to cross the US-Mexico border.
On September 28, 2022 local time, the Empire Dunes, California, United States, aerial photography of the US-Mexico border fence across quicksand. This section of the fence is called a "floating fence" because it is built on a metal tube that slides on the windswept sand. Last year, U.S. immigration authorities arrested more than 2 million people at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In August, the Biden administration quietly restarted construction of parts of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, with Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection announcing that it would re-expand "modern and efficient border facilities" along the region's borders for national security reasons. U.S. Air Force and Naval Operations agents affiliated with CBP have stepped up constant flight patrols along the border, coordinating with U.S. Border Patrol agents on the ground to intercept migrants illegally crossing the border from Mexico. In fiscal year 2022 ending September 30, U.S. immigration authorities arrested more than 2 million people at the southern border of the United States, the first time this historic threshold has been reached.
On September 28, 2022 local time, in the Imperial Dunes, California, USA, a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) helicopter patrol searched for migrant footprints near the National Canal on the US-Mexico border.
The U.S. government announced Oct. 12 that Venezuelans who cross the border on foot or swim will be immediately repatriated to Mexico without the right to seek asylum, and some Venezuelans are reconsidering their journey to the United States.
Venezuelan migrant Yusney Vellandia and her children look at a migrant ship from Necocli, Colombia, to Arkandi on October 13, 2022 local time, and she is considering continuing her journey north.
Source: Xinhua News Agency, Visual China, The Paper, US Political Tracker and US-Mexico border migration related websites